Poetry. The second volume of our City Lights Spotlight Poetry series, FREE CELL is the latest book of poems from New York-based poet Anselm Berrigan, one of the most influential American poets under the age of forty. In a departure from his previous work, FREE CELL consists of two experimental suites, "Have a Good One" and "To Hell with Sleep," connected by a central poem.

Author City: NEW YORK, NY USA

Anselm Berrigan is the author of six books of poetry, most recently NOTES FROM IRRELEVANCE (Wave Books, 2011) and FREE CELL (City Lights Publishers, 2009). Other books include TO HELL WITH SLEEP (Letter Machine Editions, 2009), SOME NOTES ON MY PROGRAMMING (Edge Books, 2006), and ZERO STAR HOTEL (Edge Books, 2002). He is the current poetry editor for The Brooklyn Rail and co-editor, with Alice Notley and Edmund Berrigan, of The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (University of California Press, 2005) and The Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan (University of California Press, 2011). A member of the subpress publishing collective, he has published THE SELECTED POEMS OF STEVE CAREY (2009) and Your Ancient See Through by Hoa Nguyen (2002). From 2003-2007 he was Artistic Director of The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church, where he also hosted the Wednesday Night Reading Series for four years. He is Co-Chair, Writing at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, and also currently teaches writing at Pratt Institute and Brooklyn College. He was a New York State Foundation for the Arts fellow in Poetry for 2007, and has received two grants from the Fund for Poetry. He lives in New York City, where he grew up, with his wife, the poet Karen Weiser, and their daughter Sylvie.

Reviews and Other Links
Adam DeGraff in Jacket
Anne Boyer @ Books of Poetry
Julia Powers @ The Brooklyn Rail